Evaluation [Part 1 & 2]

[Dare] Final Edit

three different ideas and i finally got the narrative together to do this.

i like this one best out of the three different videos i did because it flows smoothly, the narrative makes sense, the editing is edgey and fast and at times, timed with the audio which is exactly how i like to edit

i made a video with clips from my orgianl ideas and an explanation of what i liked and what i didn't like.

scrapping chick flick idea

i had a talk with my teachers and decided to go back to my first draft,
the problem with my first draft was that the plot didn't make much sense, the camera angles and editing were fine but the narrative was hard to follow.
now I'm keeping the first section of my first draft the same, the first 30 seconds or so, then I'm continuing on with my new plot from there.
in my previous post:
http://lutterworthasdanituffen0910.blogspot.com/2010/03/target-audience.html

i said that one of the reasons I'd changed was because of target audience, its true that for me it would be easier to aim for that target audience but my teacher doesn't think that first my style and neither do i, so by going back I'm aiming for my original target audience which was both genders and an age range of 16 to 20.

I'm going to use this as inspiration for the credits in my opening, this goes on for the same amount of time that my opening needs to go on for so i can see how i can make mine look.
i can do the shots, lighting and credits like this easily, but I'm going to have issues with music, i already have music for my first 30 to 50 seconds, but I'm still looking for music for the rest of it, i edit to music a lot at home so its one of my strong points but its difficult to find music like the music used in this opening



i get a lot of ideas for one film opening, but when i try to put them together i end up losing the narrative because i focus on the editing and videoing to much, with this new idea I'm planning it in depth and sticking strictly to it.

the plot of the new idea is as follows:

• it starts with a girl dead/just been killed.
• the story is from a detective's point of view
• the plot follows the detective trying to hunt down the serial killer as the number of victims piles up
• each victim is killed right outside there homes which suggests the killer stalks his victims before he kills them
• it ends with the killer being found out, after following a pattern of clues left on every victim and the links between each victim, e.g the first and the second victim knew each other

Idea changes...again...again.

im changing my idea again, this time completely, with a completely new genre, i decided to do a test idea first, and compare with my first idea and see which opening people liked better, my newest idea is the one that people like more and i think i can do a lot more with it as my first idea stopped making sense.

editing and videoing i can do easily, but i get a lot of ideas at once and they dont really make sense, so in the time i've got left im researching my new opening from the beginning.



the first two minutes of confessions of a shopaholic are pretty simple, the shots are long and drawn out and slightly slowed down, probably because its a memory,

the feedback i'd gotten on my new idea with the editing i'd done so far was that it hadn't really got a plot, i know in my head whats going on but i can't convey it to the audience, so im going to use a voice over.

Opening test

testing out my idea for the opening the full audio track is actually exactly 2:01 minutes long so i could do the whole opening with no other audio, but i think that'd be boring so around 1 minute the song fades out and theres some conversation and a different track starts up.

Titles test and new script

Credits test first! this was kind of the image that i had in mind, its just a basic mock-up of what I'm going to do and testing out transitions and the best effects to use, it still needs tweaking slightly i don't think the "CCTV camera effect" is right i think it needs to be in black and white and maybe slightly jumpy, also the text isn't right i think I'll look for some different texts to use.

Script

i mainly changed my project so i could base it around music rather then speech, dialogue tends to let people down so I'm using as little as possible.

Shot 16: Close up on student sat in front of mysterious person - "I hear they play drums during services"

Shot 17: Close up on the mysterious person - "Only to those who can hear them"

this is the sign to let the student know he/she has got the right person.

Shot 20: high angled point of view shot on mysterious person, who looks up at the student and takes the book - "Pleasure doing business."

Changing Idea

after watching some other students videos and working out the time i had to do the project in i didn't look like i would get it done in time so I've changed how im doing it slightly, its the same plot same characters but from a totally different perspective, before it started with the two main good guys and there race to the shop how im changing it so that it is from the bad guys point of view, i've also given the over all story more of a plot in doing so.

my new plot is that the bad guys have stolen a very very valuable book, and intend to use it to get money from the government or owner of said book. i've now made the character who has stolen the book and the main good guy related, the good guy is aware of what his relative is up to but is completely oblivious to the fact that his relative is aware of what he knows and that they're watching him

the storyboard opposite is basically what happens before the original storyboard, in the very last shot you can see the good guy go on the computer, that would be where my original storyboard started but having watched other openings more closely and doing my test shots i think that my original idea isn't good enough and its also difficult to keep the clips shot while having credits mixed into them

i think seeing the bad guy before the good guys makes a much better hook as well.
one of the key things to my opening is music, after watching other peoples videos one of the huge flaws is that the audio quality of dialogue is terrible. my previous idea had a lot of speech in it and i had planned on getting a separate recording thing so i could film while recording the voice from close up but i couldn't find anything suitable so by changing my idea and using music as the base Audio i can use minimal dialogue to maximum effect, the only real speech in my knew idea is during the church scene when only 20 something words are said between two people before music starts back up again and credits start again.
Our teacher said that the feedback they got from the exam board last year was that the credits weren't creative enough...so i went all out.

most of my new idea is set indoors, with no particular time of day this is so that im not restricted with time limits, i have a paper round that i do and it takes an hour by the time i get home its already dark and im busy for a lot of weekends around deadlines so by setting it in doors i can film whenever i have time. i also moved some scenes to school because i can film in school hours as well by doing that and it gives me plenty of time to edit and re-film if necessary.

Below is my rough test shots for my previous idea, i think its alright, but it just doesn't feel right to me and i don't think it flows. one of my pet peeves is when videos don't fit together very well.

Production company logo finished

took about 10 minutes to put together in sony vegas, i dont know whether to put any sound effects on it, i probably will eventually though

Sherlock Holmes

I've mentioned before that i want to use a mystery novel (preferably Sherlock Holmes) in one of my shots, this was perfectly timed because the new Sherlock Holmes film came out and me and a friend went to see it. it has both my genres in it + action and the very first opening scene was a chase scene in which the characters identity is hidden just like my opening.

because its the first movie some people don't know what the actor who's playing Holmes looks like, me being one of these people i didn't know what was going on in the opening, to me it looked like a scruffy man being chased by the police but it turned out to be Holmes running in front of the police to stop the main bad guy from doing something. I'm doing something like this in my opening, I'm making the "Good guys" look like the bad guys

the mystery element of the film kept me on the edge of my seat through-out, and by the end i was actually convinced the main bad guy could use magic, then all was revealed by Holmes towards the end only to be left with a cliff hanger ending about a second bad guy that made appearances in the film. there are a lot of times when your sat watching thinking "what on earth is Holmes doing" and then at the end he shows you why he did it, it keeps the audience hooked.

the comedy was clever, one of my favourite parts that made me laugh was a giant french bad guy who's out to get Holmes picks up a huge hammer used on making a ship, Holmes grabs a tiny hammer and there's a long shot allowing the audience to see the difference in size between both Holmes and the bad guy and there hammers, in frustration Holmes just throws his hammer at the man and does no damage what so ever and ends up almost getting squished by the boat-in-progress.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUQbmFAE5WI

the hammer scene starts at 1:43 in the trailer above, the embedding was disabled.
the trailer below is slightly different but i could embed it so i'll post both

Storyboard unfinished

I started storyboarding using Photoshop I've done about 31 shots at the moment which are just idea's i haven't put any explanation on it yet because i might change my mind and switch some shots around





James bond - Casino Royale chase scene

my 'chase' scene isn't going to be quite as dramatic as this but i want to make it look and feel as frantic as this, up until one of the two main characters hits a lamppost during a tracking shot. having the music fitting with whats happening on scene would be ideal, there are two times in the opening that i want the music to suddenly stop, once when they're waiting for the light to turn red so they can cross, and a second time when one of my characters hits the lamppost, I'll also add non diagetic sounds to this clip, the sound of a lamppost being hit but louder so it has more impact and sounds more painful! this clip does the same with the added bumps and bangs while James bond is punching someone.

More ideas

I'm sticking with the mystery comedy theme, I've got lots of ideas for it, but I'm trying to think of the best way to do it.
i want to start the opening with some fast editing, like on hot fuzz with the exaggerated whooshing noises when he moves something and the fast zooming in and out. i want to do a close-up shot of someone typing somthing stereotypical for the mysteriy genre

i plan on doing very slap stick comedy, i want to keep the opening serious up untill about 1 minute where something happens to ruin the serious atmosphere, im thinking about doing a tracking shot following 2 charaters down a road chasing somthing (not revieled yet but probably a friends pet dog thats escaped.) and one of them runs into a lampost but the camera keeps moving untill the lampost is out of the shot.

im going to be doing the titles mixed in with the shots, so when i said about doing a shot with someone typeing on a laptop, make the credit appear as the person types one letter at a time like a type writer

(embedding disabled)
Hot fuzz part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpeYvuV5J_I

i plan on doing transitions similar to how they do it in hot fuzz aswell, people walking past and the screen changes as they do so, that kind of thing.

More idea's + Videos

Like i said in my last entery, i want to do a mystery/comedy. so i've been thinking about what i could do in it, and i want to do somthing like the following test i've done


it took about 20 minutes to do 1 second, so if i was going to do this it'd only be in short bursts, or on still images

I havn't seen watchman but this is my favourite opening i've seen so far, its really simple, but really effective. some openings can be really boring but this one was good because i kept watching and didn't look away for a second despite it being 5 minutes long. the embedding was dissabled again, so link it is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=573XmVOdD2Q

i think this opening would have been just as effective without the country music in the background, the music adds a sad mood to it, but if it wasn't there just the scenes on the screen are powerful enough.
i thought it was good how the credits mixed in with the video, i hardly noticed them. i plan on doing someone similar with my opening. i also intend to use music as the base of my opening but something fast paced and a strong beat.

Ideas and More videos

I have a lot of different ideas for my film opening but i'm not sure what genre to do so i'm watching some more videos for inspiration

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8hqExgrxQU

This is the hot fuzz trailer, the embedding is disabled so URL will have to do.
i couldn't find the opening sequence so i watched the trailer instead (even though we're watching it in Media now i'd been meaning to watch it at home anyway its one of my favourite films)
i'd like to do something like this with my opening, action, but funny as well



spider man 2 opening titles.
i could do something like this with Sony Vegas, it would take a very very very long time but i've done something similar in my own time before

my idea for my opening is to add my credits/titles into the clips so they are coming out from behind objects



the pirates of the caribbean opening sequence, in which there are no credits and only the title at the very end, its a really effective opening because it gets straight into the action.

im trying to think about the time of year when we start filming so i no what kind of weather there will be, because it would be difficult to do a film about a beach party or something in snow! :D
i have to remember that i've got limited locations and limited people to be in my opening as well as weather and other facts that could affect it, so trying to take all that into consideration, while thinking about genre and an idea is proving to be quiet difficult
i was thinking maybe a mystery/comedy because it would be easy to work around location/people/weather and is a pretty wide genre for ideas

Video openings

I've been watching some video openings for ideas for my own video i've watched some on DVD's at home but these are some of the ones i found on youtube.



This is the opening to the pink panther, i won't be doing something like this because its all animation but its still good because of the way they show the titles so they mix in with animated action, i could do something like this in my own video!



This is the opening to James bond - Golden eye. its a typical Bond opening with all the figures as silhouettes, guns and explosions, again not somthing i could do easily, it is possible with my own softwear to do somthing like this but it would take a long time, you have to do masking frame by frame and it takes forever to do just a minutes worth of clip. I can do the clips overlapping and fading through though!



not a practical opening, it goes on for a very long time before the titles start, but it fits the films genre (Comady/musical) and hooks the audiance in straight away, introduce the main charater and does it all through song! again, this isn't a very good for my video because its long and i can't do musical things

i watched Titanic aswell, but the embedding was dissabled so heres the URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPQYUVvh2xc

This opening is really simple, its just a montage of old style videos of titanic setting sail for the final time. the opening doesn't need to be anymore then that because its powerful enough as it is, Titanic is the most famous ship wreck in the world so most people know what is going to happen. i could do a simple opening, but it would have to be something people could recognize easily, i could do a shelf of Sherlock Holmes books, or something else most people know about